raise the stakes
by incongruent
Summary: The gods' favor does not fall to those who merely ask. —Dalamar, Raistlin, Fistandantilus—


_disclaimer_: Dragonlance belongs to WotC; I claim nothing.

* * *

_"The magic is in the blood, it flows from the heart. Every time you use it, part of yourself goes with it. Only when you are prepared to give of yourself, and receive nothing back, will the magic work for you."_ - Theobald, quoting Par-Salian

* * *

**raise the stakes**

* * *

When Raistlin kills it is with a word and a spark and the mad, mad rush of Nuitari's grace cast uncaring down to earth, over and over and over again until the carnage forms an impenetrable wall around the spells of warding. Dalamar knows nothing of the bloodless gore that spews forth from behind the wards, as his eyes have been shut since the magic-laden hurricanes first threatened to tear them from their sockets.

Raistlin's experiments are here, always here, this barely-existent realm of half-souls where every word spoken is a half-truth and every spell cast bereft of its secondary function. Around them rages the storm of endless disposable minions of the dark, rent from still-warm bodies that tear the fabric of the universe apart in search of that which will make them whole, that kill and steal and burn out entire worlds to fill their own eternal emptiness.

It is these tormented half-souls that Raistlin brings back with him, that writhe and throb and twist and scream and _live_ for the split second the magic freezes into eternity. Dalamar does not need to feign his horror and revulsion, for dark and godless it is, Raistlin is.

It will happen again, over and over and over again, for Raistlin would never cease and desist over such a failure, not until the spells of protection and warding forcefully bleed the magic from flesh long exhausted. And even then they will not falter, will not fall; the archmage's pride would never allow otherwise.

And Raistlin knows, for it is the only possible ending; as he has brought it to them, so it will come for him: some beautiful death, at the mercy of half-lived darkness and burning, burning magic.

* * *

Around the walls of the Tower of High Sorcery in Palanthas the specters live out their reluctant life, pressed close against the divide between living and undead for the second-hand sensation of warmth. But even they know the difference; that which radiates from beyond the warding spells is not the sweet soothing warmth of the blood of the living, but the unnatural dry heat of magical power which knows no bounds.

Dalamar Nightson sleeps and dreams of darkness, walks with the spirits his only guide. The Tower of High Sorcery at Palanthas is his and yet not his, and still he waits—for the _Shalafi'_s instruction and something greater than himself that he cannot see.

He walks in the dark amidst the specters and the shadows; sometimes it seems that the entirety of the gods' creation is wrapped within the walls of this very Tower. The portal to the Abyss is secreted away behind a magically locked door somewhere even he cannot reach; the nightblue-bound spellbooks hold the undeciphered keys to the secrets of the universe, and trapped within the _Shalafi_'s eyes is all of Time. The twin hourglasses of sand and gold conceal tides that drown even the ageless, that tear the youth from his bones and crumble his living flesh to ashes and dust; at least the _Shalafi_ could not hope to live long enough to truly see him waste away and die.

He no longer cares where his loyalties lie; he thinks that perhaps even he himself does not know, not after so long spent suffocating within spells of warding, battling specters for his life alongside the greatest archmage in living memory. He has lived ninety years and in that time ventured farther than any of his kind, conquering the Test and the Tower and fleeing the disdain of his people.

But Raistlin had been yet younger and ever more alone, fighting spirits and the dark. Surely the Conclave had sanctioned his right to the robes only reluctantly, shattered his body and crippled his soul, abandoned him to a life of weakness and desolation; this talent could not be tempered and nurtured, for it was volatile and incendiary and perfectly capable of crashing and burning at such times when it could not be afforded. Already it was a double-edged sword which had no need to turn on them to hurt. And so they had left the desperate ambition to fester and a fierce self-reliance to grow, and on the fringes of the Conclave's vision the constricted young mage had risen to become Master of the Tower and an acknowledged threat to the very foundations of the world.

Dalamar himself could never turn to those mad ambitious visions, because the Conclave had found him, and claimed him, and for the price of apprenticeship at a Tower of High Sorcery bound him irrevocably to their suffocating supervision. What he does, he does at the whim of that unreachable power, for the greater good of a world which had so fiercely denied him.

The Conclave would save Krynn. Raistlin would destroy it.

And it is no choice, no choice at all, when he stands before the Conclave and Caramon Majere with the mark of the _Shalafi_'s fingers upon his heart, laughing and bleeding and _knowing_, without a doubt, his final destination.

* * *

_"Often you have stood beside me in the laboratory, facing those I have dragged from the planes of their existence. You knew that if I but drew a breath at the wrong time, they would rip the living hearts from our bodies and devour them while we writhed before them in torment."_

_"It was my privilege."_

* * *

Fistandantilus is exactly as Raistlin had imagined— a creeping darkness, hidden so far beneath velvet and shadows that he is no longer a person but the sum total of all that lives without light.

Raistlin plays himself with all the delicate handling of the entertainer— a frail scholar gifted with the favor of the dark god, tragic and young and childishly ambitious, unknowing of the latent power that pulsed through his veins. A respectful bow with downcast eyes, a tremor to the smile; carefully chosen words, forced between shallow breathing and delicate fits of coughing, born of weakness and sickness and a fragile inner determination forged from years of pain. It was only knowledge for knowledge's sake that he desired, and nowhere else to find such instruction save the black, black magic of death and decay.

_The spirit is willing but the flesh is weak_; surely Fistandantilus could not resist such limitless power, not when it is caught and struggling for release from within such a vessel of gossamer and dust, laughably pitiful and unable to fight.

* * *

Fistandantilus considers, wonders why this precocious young mage would so willingly wander into the sanctuary of his magic, even having heard the horror tales engraved upon his public profile. The centuries of life have opened his eyes; he has claimed for his own the night, the darkness, the fickle grace of the god of the black moon, and in return he has paid their price.

Now the name of Fistandantilus refers no longer to a single person but the collective memories of every mage who had found his way into this particular corner of the darkness. Over and over again he has completed the ritual, the bloodstone depositing yet another delicate overlay of stolen memories onto the sedimented earth of his ageless mind, emotions and morals and virtues and desires clashing and burning and cancelling each other out until nothing remained except a single-minded determination in the pursuit of one thing, and one thing only.

But this would be, truly, the last time. Lifetimes upon stolen lifetimes he has devoted to deconstructing the universe, but now the secret of immortality lies benign in black and scarlet ink and papyrus beneath his gnarled fingertips. The Kingpriest's power weakens; the gods continue to anger, but before they cast their wrath down upon doomed Istar he would be gone with Denubis cleric of Paladine clasped safely at his side.

Raistlin visibly flinches from his touch, and beneath the archmage's death-grasp the magic sings from within the veins in the thin wrist, in time with the faint beat of a pulse. The young man raises his head to meet the archmage's gaze and his eyes are shattering and gasoline-blue, widened with wonder as if witnessing beauty for the first time. It is real and yet a mask too perfect to be real.

So the young man Raistlin would play this deadly game with him, all skill and finesse and control, pit endless, fragile reserves of knowledge and grace against his centuries of careless experience and raw power. But he would emerge victorious in the end— as he has always done and as he will always do, the fate of the world written in scraps of black cloth pinned fluttering to the gates— and leave this mage bled dry and his reflection trapped and screaming in the bloodstone.

He decides it would be no great loss.

* * *

Fistandantilus is master of much the same art as Raistlin is, twists the rules from under the horrified eyes of his past apprentices; in the self-assurance born of centuries left to live, he would never notice it is the game itself that has changed. Fistandantilus might hold the cards, but it is the common street magicians that have all the answers and they never tell; all too soon and all too late, it would be a different sort of power that illuminated the final victory.

It had not been the gods' grace that had worked the magic that kept him alive. In his and his brother's youth he had wrought a different kind of miracle, and it by his own hand had kept him safe and warm and loved within the solace of the small town with the same name. Now the weight of the bloodstone is heavy in his hand, the final legacy of a magic that is not magic but flash powder and misdirection, half a lifetime of sleeping spells and healing herbs; it had been this illusion that had kept him safe and kept him weak, and now he had used sleight-of-hand for the last time.

_The Test is done. He has passed. Caramon is dead, as surely as the rest of the world withers and dies behind glittering golden eyes. And whatever might one call the screaming of a child who could not speak? Outside this dark, dark tower he has no one now, nowhere to belong and so magic alone will be the shelter of the soul shattered by the fall._

He has always believed that Caramon would be the other half of his tormented soul. But in the world of magic and the gods' deception there is little need for strength or steel, and the presence or absence of his twin, he finds, does little to ease the void that yet wears away at his resolve. It would be the memories of Fistandantilus that anchor him to the world; Caramon is no longer here, not now, not ever, and so perhaps it is within the flesh of this ancient-young mage that he will find respite, redemption, the power he so richly does not deserve.

When it is done, he cannot even decide if it had been worthy of regret.

* * *

_"And you knew, didn't you, that if such an event occurred, I would save myself but not you?"_

* * *

It is impossible to tell for how long he has been secreted away, now, the only eyes of the Conclave which circles blind and feeling around this dark, dark tower of death and magic; time runs false within the boundaries of the _Shalafi_'s dangerous experiments. It was precisely the magic that forcibly dragged him from that pedestaled life and into the muddy, murky depths of the pursuit of—something—here, only here, for he could find it nowhere else in the entire world.

The name of Raistlin has fallen unheard from Astinus' books, an abrupt silence after half a lifetime of pain, an ending which Dalamar knows is no ending but the crossroads to another story's passing. And since receiving the _Shalafi_'s call he has been following the signs, has perceived in its entirety the archmage's plan and realized its futility. The course of a river cannot be altered by tossing in a pebble; he has seen it in the wretched longevity of his people, in reflections of the _Shalafi_'s hourglass eyes. And yet he can do nothing but read over and over of Fistandantilus' death, not believing for a moment but knowing that somehow, sheer force of will and anarchistic ambition would be strong enough to alter the tides of Time.

He can no longer remember the house of Silvanesti, not his family nor his friends; the music of the aspen trees is far lost to him, as are the words of his people. Even now they have twisted his once-existence into another fable, another cautionary tale of a beautiful and wayward child, who had no one to live for and nothing to keep safe, who found sanctuary where no one else could see, who had succumbed to the sweet temptations of the black moon in the night and used its forbidden magic to fill the bottomless chasm of his cracked heart. He had sacrificed everything he had, his time and his mind and his life and the very light of his soul, and all because he loved the magic more than anything.

How far he has fallen, yet he regrets not at all as Nuitari's grace shines dark on darker shadows on the walls. Dalamar knows, beautiful and sweetly sorrowful, but damn the Conclave to the Abyss and back before he would lay claim to that soul shattered by the fall. For another glimpse of that beauty, entwined with ivory and death—he would give the world and more, had it only been his to give. He will not admit that there is nowhere now, no place for him to go and no one to keep him safe within the treacherous walls of this magical prison. He sleeps each night but does not dream, walks without light amidst the tortured inhabitants of the darkened hallways and does not see. And still he waits, for death, for change, for memory—

For Raistlin to return, and set him free.

* * *

_author's note_: comments and concrit all very much appreciated.


End file.
